ATKIN­SON’S STILL GOT IT

There’s lots of laughs to be had as Bri­tish ac­tor and co­me­dian Rowan Atkin­son re­turns to the big screen in Johnny English Strikes Again, his third out­ing as the bum­bling Bri­tish spy tasked with sav­ing the day

Johnny English Strikes Again is his third out­ing as bum­bling Bri­tish spy Johnny English, who was in­spired by Atkin­son’s char­ac­ter in the pop­u­lar Bar­clay­card TV ads of the early ’90s.

When we catch up with English, he’s hap­pily pass­ing on his spy skills to his stu­dents at the board­ing school where he now works as a teacher.

But five days be­fore the Bri­tish PM (Emma Thomp­son) is to host her first G12 sum­mit, MI7’s se­cu­rity is breached and ev­ery agent in the field iden­ti­fied and ex­posed.

The only hope of find­ing the per­pe­tra­tor is to bring an agent out of re­tire­ment, but with most of them ei­ther dead or close to it, the head of MI7 is left with only one choice – English.

He read­ily ac­cepts the mis­sion, but soon learns a lot has changed since he was in the field. He calls upon his trusty side­kick Bough (Ben Miller) to track down the hacker us­ing old­school meth­ods to avoid dig­i­tal de­tec­tion.

The bat­tle between ana­log (English) and dig­i­tal (pretty much ev­ery­one else) plays out through­out the course of the film and it should elicit laughs across the gen­er­a­tions.

English soon crosses paths with the mys­te­ri­ous Ophe­lia (Olga Kurylenko), whose beauty dis­tracts him from her mul­ti­ple at­tempts to kill him.

An ex­tended scene on a night­club dance floor, in which English’s dance moves un­wit­tingly save his life, is a par­tic­u­lar high­light.

As a friend de­scribed it to me, he’s like John Tra­volta gone wrong. If you don’t find it funny, then your funny bone must be numb.

Thomp­son is fab­u­lous as the flus­tered PM, who can’t quite be­lieve the fate of the na­tion is in the hands of English.

You’ll see some of the set­ups com­ing from a mile away, but that doesn’t make this film any less fun. It’s good, silly en­ter­tain­ment.

Emma Thomp­son plays the Bri­tish Prime Min­is­ter while Rowan Atkin­son is back as a bum­bling spy in Johnny English Strikes Again.